Jill Kargman – Tumor Humor
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| Jill Kargman |
After a series of Botox shots, which were little leagues next to my tattoo, I might add, I was finito. I was getting up to get dressed when I had a quickie last question for sweet Dr. Cela, who was already walking out. "Do you mind just taking a quick peek at this mole?" I asked. "My other doctor said it was fine, but it keeps bleeding."
"How long has it been bleeding?" she asked, coming to check the spot on my right upper thigh.
"Oh, like on and off for over three years," I said blithely.
"Really?" she asked. "Your other doctor didn't want to biopsy it?"
"Well, no, I mean he saw it three times and he said it's benign and that it's in a highly trafficked area and that it may have been rubbed by a garment or something."
"Hmm. well, it looks totally benign, but if it's bleeding, I'd get rid of it!" she told the nurse to prep and then sliced it off. I didn't think about it again.
Then, a week later, in a deluge of biblical proportions, I was pushing Fletch in the stroller while holding a massive umbrella when my cell phone rang. It was my doctor with the pathology report. Not the nurse, but Dr. Cela herself. Uh-oh.
"Jill," she said in a grave tone, "I'm so sorry, but I'm afraid I'm calling with some very bad news." I stopped on the street, stunned, as my heart started pounding out of my chest like Roger Rabbit's. "You have melanoma. I was so shocked when I got the pathology report that I called back the lab to have them double-check the results, explaining you were a young mother, but they confirmed the findings. You need to get to Memorial Sloan-Kettering right away..." She went on and I morphed into robot mode, barely hearing a word but nodding and recording the number to call and what I needed to do. It wasn't until a half hour later, when I heard my parents' voices, that I burst into tears. Luckily my mom had volunteered at the hospital for 19 years and within hours of everyone scrambling I had an appointment for the next day.
My surgeon explained that they needed to take out the lymph nodes in my vagina to see if the cancer had spread, plus obviously take out the whole area around the tumor, which was placed at stage 2 because it was growing into my leg beneath the mole. I was slated to go under the knife four days later. I looked at the surgeon's associate and said, "So, like, what are the chances that, like...I die?"
He looked at his colleague then back at me, clearing his throat. "Fifteen percent."
I burst into tears.
"I said one-five, not five-oh!" he said, surprised at my weepiness.
"I know!" I said through my tears. "That's still bad! I have three kids! That's one in six point something!"
I froze. People around me went into action, sending flowers, notes, and chocolate, but I was in panic mode. I just couldn't imagine dealing with years of battling this crap of scans, blood tests, radical diet change (fourteen Sprites a week became one, and buh-bye to Britney Spearsian snack food, including a Cheeto-dust-free existence), and more vitamin horse pills a day than I have fingers and toes. As if I had time!
Four days later, I went in and was facing going under anesthesia for the first time in my life. I was freaked but knew people did this every day and it was no biggie. Before my surgery, I had to go for tests in nuclear medicine, where they injected a radioactive dye into the site and the nodes and I had to lie in a tube.
"Like...lie still?"
"Yes, totally still. You can't move or we have to start over."
"Okay, so, it's like 20 minutes?" I asked, recalling a thyroid scan I'd had years back.
"Nnnnno, it's 70," the nurse said.
Sweat. Pouring.
"Seventy minutes?" I gasped. "Oh my god, I can't, I can't do it. I CAN'T LIE IN THERE FOR SEVENTY MINUTES!"
The nurse calmly explained they would sedate me and that that I'd be fine. I started breathing so heavily I feared I'd lapse into hyperventilation that would necessitate a brown paper bag, just like when I tried to show off in a camp color war minimarathon and collapsed in a red-faced wimpy mess.
I swallowed the pill and felt the beats of my heart speeding up rather than decelerating. I was shaking from the cold of the hospital creeping through my little gown and I thought I wouldn't have the strength to deal.
And then something happened. The door opened and in walked another patient for the same procedure. She was eight. I instantly felt so loserish for freaking when this precious child—a second-grader two years older than my oldest daughter— was facing the exact same thing. In that moment, my whole world changed. Of course I always knew there were sick kids, but when faced with my own mortality I spun into self-protection mode and never realized how lucky I was that it was me and not one of my three children. I thought about this cute girl's mother, sobbing there in the waiting room with tattered issues of National Geographic. I pictured it being me and how I would pray to switch places. So, see, my wish came true. It was me over my kids. And from then on, I never complained, never felt scared. Not even once.
Okay, except when I woke up and saw the eight-inch scar up my thigh. And that wasn't even the bad one—the vagina one was way more painful an area, as the groin holds tender nerves, but eventually the pain subsided. And now as I face my first bathing suit season, I'm okay with it. Actually, better than okay—I weirdly dig it. It's a jagged badge of honor that shows how lucky I am. And it's a reminder that I need to slather sunblock on my kids like I'm papier-mâchéing them in zinc. Can't be too careful! And can't be too grateful.
- Excerpted from the chapter, "Tumor Humor" in Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut by Jill Kargman
MRA is Proud to Partner with Author and Melanoma Survivor Jill Kargman to Spread Awareness of Melanoma